University of Georgia (UGA) Costa Rica is an official international residential campus of the University of Georgia. The campus is located in the small community of San Luis de Monteverde, Puntarenas, Costa Rica. ¡Pura Vida!

Share this:

Like this:

Navigating my way through the UGA Costa Rica San Luis Botanical Garden’s medicinal plant garden alongside several tourists, I came across a tree that had been sliced, battered, and bruised. Someone was clearly out for blood.

Share this:

Like this:

I’ve wound my way through the medicinal garden a number of times, passing piper plants, lemongrass, and angel’s trumpets, and sharing my findings with you. Just when I thought I had crossed everything off of the garden to-do list, like observing the oddest plant, tasting the sweetest leaf, and guessing correctly between lemongrass and citronella, I turned a verdantly opaque corner and nearly shish-kabobbed myself on this:

The Sandbox Tree, Hura crepitans

Would you believe me if I told you this plant isn’t dangerous?

Hint: You probably shouldn’t.

The Sandbox Tree, Hura crepitans, its bark in particular, has toxic properties. Stay away, right? Wrong. The kicker is that Costa Ricans once used the tree to harvest food. Here’s how it worked: because the tree is typically found in riparian environments, fishermen used to slice up and grind the bark of the tree, activating and releasing the toxic sap. They would toss the bark into streams to poison fish by way of stunning. The paralyzed fish were then easier to catch, and were killed after regaining consciousness in a bucket and supposedly detoxing, therefore becoming “safe food” for Ticos.

This practice of fishing is now banned in Costa Rica, not only because of a direct threat to human health (contact of sap with eyes can cause temporary blindness), but also because the toxic sap is enough to kill other organisms in the streams.

Share this:

Like this:

Just the other week, a few UGA Costa Rica interns spotted monkeys while hiking the trails around campus. Seeing a white-faced capuchin monkey is reason enough to do a happy dance, but after getting a closer look, the naturalists realized they were in the presence of spider monkeys – an incredible rarity to spot on campus.

So much so, that no member of the UGA Costa Rica staff can recall ever having seen the orange-tinted primates on campus trails.

The Central American Spider Monkey is among the most active and agile of cebids, (family Cebidae) or New World monkeys. Part of the reason for their activeness is body morphology; their forelimbs and fingers are longer than other monkeys’, and they have a vestigial, or underdeveloped, thumb – it just gets in the way of swinging! Having a prehensile tail sure does help with agility, too. It’s like having a fifth arm. A spider monkey’s prehensile tail is not only defter than other monkey tails, but it also has exposed skin on the underside, like a no-slip grip with which it confidently grasps branches.

Spider monkey diets mainly consist of fruit. Because of the sugars in fruit, they are high-energy, moving quickly and frequently in the canopy in order to find more of their sporadic source of food. To make up for the lack of protein in the fruits, spider monkeys may eat young leaves and decaying bark.

So why all the rave about spotting spider monkeys at UGA Costa Rica?

A species’ reappearance (and disappearance) is often an indicator of environmental changes – both good and not so good. No one is entirely sure why the spider monkeys are here, and whether or not it’s an optimistic find, but there are a number of theories germinating around campus…

The more commonly seen white-faced capuchin monkeys, recognized for their aggressive and territorial behaviors, may have been quite defensive of their UGA Costa Rica territory in the past, thus keeping spider monkeys at bay. The first theory then, is that perhaps the dynamic between monkey groups has recently been changing and the two species are learning to overlap territories?

Another hypothesis is that the monkeys are following their food source. With changing climate, there’s a chance fruit dispersal patterns are deviating from the norm, and spider monkeys are adapting locations as a result.

Over lunch, I chatted about a third, and seemingly promising theory with Jheudy Carballo, a tour guide leading the Morganton Day School throughout Costa Rica. Having worked as a guide for the past 16 years, Carballo raised his eyebrows when I mentioned the spider-monkey sighting. First, he mentioned that he has seen spider, howler, and white-faced capuchins all in one tree, and therefore doesn’t think the sighting is a result of territorial cease-fire.

According to Carballo spider monkeys were supposedly wiped out of the Monteverde region by yellow fever in the 1970s. Their population has since been bouncing back, and it’s possible that they are now expanding their territory from the Monteverde Reserve area into the UGA Costa Rican cloud forest in order to maximize on food availability. He also mentioned that a growing population is indicative of a rejuvenating forest.